First record of Lepidodactylus lugubris in Suriname

Abstract

The natural distribution of Lepidodactylus lugubris includes portions of south and southeast Asia, as well as areas of the western and central Pacific, but it has become established extralimitally in association with the movement of people and cargo by ship (Bauer and Henle, 1994; Lever, 2003). Known localities in Central and South America include coastal sites in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil (Smith and Grant, 1961; Schauenberg, 1968; Mechler, 1968; Ineich, 1999; Lever, 2003; Kohler, 2003). This species was not previously known from Suriname (Hoogmoed, 1973), and this is the first reported population. The species was common on walls at night at the Eco Resort Hotel in Paramaribo, where no other nocturnal gecko species were seen, but was absent from less humanimpacted areas investigated in the Brokopondo District of Suriname. The nearest published localities are in Colombia. Kluge (1968 [1966]) reported the species from an unspecified locality in eastern Colombia. This record is not, however, supported by cited voucher material, making the southwestern Colombian localities of Guapi, Tumaco, Cali and Anchicaya (Ineich, 1999), each approximately 2750 km away, the nearest confirmed Lepidodactylus sites. The single Brazilian record is based on the holotype of Peropus neglectus Girard, 1858, a junior synonym of L. lugubris, from Rio de Janeiro, but the locality is suspect and the species has never again been found in Brazil (Vanzolini, 1968). Thus, the Paramaribo animals reported here represent the southernmost Atlantic population of Lepidodactylus lugubris and the only South American population east of the Isthmus of Panama.